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Dell Found Guilty of Fraud, False Advertising
Last year, the Attorney General of New York instigated a lawsuit against Dell for practices like long hold times, repeated call transfers, and disconnects for customers waiting for phone support — all of which make it harder to cash in on promises of (and paid-for) technical support." Now, raptor78 writes "IDG News reports on New York Attorney General's victory over the poor services and deceptive practices employed by Dell over the past years with regards to technical support and promotional offers. It is about time someone spoke up and realized some of the horrors people deal with at Dell." Another reader points to a quick report from Fortune magazine on the ruling.
I like this quote at the end of the article. Are they ha ha only serious?
Towards the Singularity.
Provide the damn support. Make it simple, easy to use and easy to understand. Support's the sort of thing that makes you customers for life or loses customers for life. Giving them long hold times, poor service, or even someone with an accent will taint their experience with that product forever. Whenever someone comments on the computer, the owner will tell the story of the bad service. When they go to buy their next computer, they'll buy anywhere else unless there's a very compelling reason to stick with Dell.
p.s. the accent comment also means any strong accent, even southern or north eastern ones. Strong accents are, however, easier to find outside of the country.
While it's great that a big corporation is being held liable for false advertising, aren't there worse examples out there than computer technical support? What about false advertising for medicines, diets, and health-related products and services? Alternative medicine is one gigantic - and very dangerous - scam. What about all the food product labeling - low fat, organic, and all that meaningless garbage that is totally deceptive? And what about the goddamn P3N15 3nlArgment pi11s I paid through the nose for - those farking things didn't work AT ALL!
A-Bomb
Simple games theory. If the expected payoff of fraud is greater than the penalty, fraud is inevitable. Here's a thought: instead of fines, revoke the corporate charter for serious crimes. Only in America can people still get the death penalty while corporations can't.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"Dude, you're getting a fine!"
More Twoson than Cupertino
Personally I've not experienced these practices the article speaks of. My video card died on my Latitude D630 about a month ago, and it took me all of 30 minutes to speak with a technical support staffer on the Dell website and schedule someone to come out the next day. Maybe this is a case of "you get what you pay for," since I've got the next-day service contract -- maybe people with lesser maintenance contracts and whatnot get the runaround. Just my perspective.
That's what they get for advertising that they sell "fast, reliable, secure computers" when virtually all of them ship with Windows :-)
I can't think of any?
I had a great experience with Zyxel recently with a bad router(the OVERNIGHTED me a new powersupply), but Zyxel isn't really mainstream big box like LinkSys or HP.
Has anyone EVER had a exceptional experience with HP/Dell/Gateway? I'm serious, this is a good discussion point.
Any questions?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I've worked tech support before and people do like to blow things up a lot more than they should be. "Well, I've called like 50 times", "I've been on hold for over X hours", etc etc... Most of these issues are pretty monitored (especially wait times). People just want you to feel sorry for them and have you treat them like they are the first person ever with a problem. Now hardware issues are another issue. If the company tells you the are sending you a shipping label and it takes 2 weeks to get there rather than 2 days, as promised, well that's quite silly.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sometimes computer-placed advertising just ain't what it's cut out to be.
On the way to rtfa, a full-screen Dell ad popped up.
Or perhaps, the software is very, very clever and Dell was trying to discourage me from continuing on to read the article.
It'll soon be cheaper to run a call center in the USA than in India or Mexico.
So quality of service should go up or the language barrier should go down. May not go hand in hand, but I think majority of the issues are caused by the language barrier anyway.
They deserve a kicking in the courts, it took me 3months for them to repair my laptop properly - it went back 3 times and came back still broken 3 times and took 6 months to resolve the issue once and for all. The issue was a knackered graphics card, display corruption as soon as you boot up even on an external device although after they "fixed" it the second time it came back with the same corruption and after 5mins died completely and failed to boot at all at which point their tech support before offering to repair it properly ran me through a series of diagnostics and intelligent questions like "What is the error message". Quite what error message he was expecting from a laptop which I quite clearly explained initially had display corruption (although explaining "display corruption" to someone who doesn't natively speak English in a call centre is hard enough and shouldn't be something I have to do) preventing viewing of any error if there was one to start with followed by not even powering on at all by the time I called them I've no idea, but then, that's Dell.
In the end they decided to just replace it, told me to send the old one back when the new one was delivered but the courier guy said he only had a drop off.
I phoned Dell 3 times over the next 6 months to collect it and they told me the courier would be there on certain days yet never arrived yet I've never once had a courier let me down here despite using them like once or twice a week for the last 8 years so it was blatantly them not organising it.
After that period Dell decided to threaten me for not letting them have the laptop back by charging my card used for the original purchase 2 years prior for the new laptop despite me making every attempt to get it back to them and them not actually being arsed to properly arrange to collect it. When it came to it cost me a sizeable amount of cash in phone bills, hours on the phone trying to sort it out,
Worst company EVER. It's just a shame they didn't get a harder kicking than this. They used to be awesome, now I wouldn't touch them ever again no matter how able they are to improve because I went in to their service buying the laptop when they were still half-decent and watch them devolve into sheer incompetence and worthlessness over the next few years at which point as unfortunately needed their assistance as above.
Other practices I've noticed they used not mentioned here in the UK is they advertise really good offers on some hardware but when you phone up to purchase it when it's a phone only offer they say the offer doesn't really exist and try and sell you it for up to £100 more, I spoke to trading standards and they said they can do this as long as they sell at least some laptops for the offer price, even if that's only to 2 people in a population of 60 million despite blatantly infering that the offer is open to everyone until the end of the offer data.
All that said, I'm not sure there's really a better option out there for things like laptops either - all the major tech companies seem just as bad.
I recall a time when I suspected fraud on my account. I must have called 20 times and no one would talk to me. The is a supposedly a fraud department that you can leave a message for (but can't be transfered to) but no one there called me back either.
One of my bosses left 3 messages for the Dell sales rep telling him/her that he was interested in buying 100 computers. 3 months later no call had been returned. We bought IBM instead.
A friend ordered a Dell laptop online. The order didn't go through. There was no history of the order available. She placed it again and three days later was charged for two laptops.
I had a job interview with Dell and the manager was well aware in advance of my resume. I was put through the standard interview process where someone decided that my resume didn't fit the skill set required (Duh the manager knew that.)
I have yet to have an interaction with Dell in which their crappy internal processes have not been revealed.
Dell sucks!!! I don't care how inexpensive their computers are I will never buy one. As an IT manager, at any company I work for I will attempt to divert them from buying Dell. I tell everyone not to buy Dell. Don't buy Dell.
People buy Dells because they are so freaking cheap. Apparently some people expect to get someone to hold their hand too for that price. Silly people.
Vonage, for example.
I guess it depends on how you define "exceptional". I've never had a problem with Dell, but I've never dealt with Gateway or HP (outside of swiches). I call support, politely listen to them go through their checklist and get my stuff fixed. Total phone time is generally less than 45 minutes. A huge part of the problem is that the people buying the computers don't have any ability to troubleshoot them. They just get pissed off and want "mah dang computer machine fixed now!".
They should be fine trying to sell Linux support. I don't think there is anyone on their support team that actually knows Linux.
Dell said in a statement. "We believe that our customer service levels are at or above industry standards."
AOL!
I have never had good luck with talking with Dell on the phone but the online chat tech support option has usually been very effective. That is of course if you have a machine that is running to chat with them, preferably a different machine than the one you are inquiring about.
I found when I had a Dell that the service would fluctuate. The first desktop I was sent wouldn't even boot - one phone call and the next day a new one was shipped. Of course, that didn't work either - insert this about twice more; eventually getting one that did. I had the three year technical support next day service which worked pretty well until six months before my contract ended. My monitor went all exorcist and when I called Dell about it, I was asked, "What? You really think we are going to send you a new monitor?" and then LAUGHED. They wouldn't even repair it. Lost a customer that day, I tell you. Sadly, the computer industry is very much like the car industry. People who do not know much about computers can easily get taken in: "No ma'am, it's not the hardware, your flux capacitor software has been dropping packets.... that's not covered." You kinda feel a little dirty after dealing with Dell, wondering how you got screwed or how you will.
Errr... This comment was intended as a reply to a different post. Please disregard.
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
Yes, Bell, I'm talking about you, and I'm not even a direct Bell customer (but they do own/manage the lines). I'm *still* trying to figure out how to get Bell to fix the intercom for my apartment, which they broke when installing the dry-loop for my ADSL. According to them, the only way to have both is to get an actual phone line (with Bell, of course) and then have the intercom reconnected through that.
Seems to me that they *could* install a line-filter on the intercom (or add another line beside the dry-loop without charging me for damn phone service), but the last several times I've called them I got switched multiple times between the Customer Service, Dry-Loop DSL, Internet Service, and various other departments for several hours before being hung up on during a transfer.
Does this mean I can sue Bell?
When I owned a Dell, I couldn't talk to anyone before going through India first. Once I got a really knowledgeable person on the other end, but for the most part, the Indians were incompetent and did everything they could to stall me from getting in-home service from my contract. My computer's motherboard was replaced 7 times in the few years that I owned it. Several times it was because the SMT ethernet or USB ports came loose from the motherboard. So Dell spent $800 to fix a $0.10 part.
Between the news of McClellan's book and now this, I've said, "Well, Duh!" twice today.
You could replace Dell with Comcast and the complaints would be exactly the same.
We are no worse than anyone else.
I read this story last night and it seems that even though the judge ruled against Dell, he ruled FOR basically nobody other than the AG's ego. This was a hollow victory at best. Dell doesn't even have to give $5-off-your-next-order coupons to everyone in New York. The citizens affected by the charges against Dell are unknown. They're going to have to find them - I guess I'm one of them - and the damages awarded could amount to a hill of beans.
Say what you will about New York ex-gov Elliot Spitzer's faults, but as AG he did a damn fine job of protecting consumers in this state. Cuomo, the son of former gov Mario Cuomo, is grandstanding. If he really wanted to stick it to Dell - and lord knows they deserve it - he would have solicited input from consumers who had been given the shaft from Dell. After all, he only filed the lawsuit after enough people complained to the AG's office in the first place. I was one of them. But now we get pretty much bupkus while he gets the publicity. Frakking politicians.
It's mixed for me - at home I have and had a few Dells at any given time and I've never needed support. At work we order hundreds of them and I'd say about 1-2% fail, but it's overwhelmingly cheap RAM (often Samsung in my experience.)
When I speak on the phone it's pretty easy to get the parts replaced and usually goes to a call center in the USA (Utah I believe) but I speak to home PC owners and they say they still get Indian call centers. For business it seemed for a while like they'd outsource, people would complain and they'd move operations to the US, then decide to cheapen it and outsource again for a while until people complain and they move it back again.
That said, as easy as it is for a business customer it will take at least 45 min to go through the whole process and I usually get a rep within a few minutes too...
1. System tag lookup
2. Troubleshooting steps
3. Ok, it's approved, collect contact info AGAIN
4. Call another agent to sit and listen as they confirm my contact info
5. Take a confirmation and dispatch number.
6. End call
Then the next day or two later the parts show up with a shipping label to send the bad one back.
Advertising on the article that announces your conviction of false advertising.
Just wow.
___ I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards, and I Never Mod them UP.
I find Vonage to be very helpful.
OF course, I:
- figure out everything I can and have the info at my fingertips when I call
- always treat the person on the other end of the phone with courtesy and respect, even when the only verb tense they know is present participle
- don't expect miracles from entry-level tech support
- have been with them for years and they value me as a customer
No experience there but I've had good experience with Fujitsu. Hold times under 10 minutes, someone that speaks excellent english, problems resolved quickly. The only problem I've seen with them is that if a product is more than a couple years old they don't release any new drivers for it, and most items ship from japan so there is a slight delay in getting them.
...that the sharp pencils at Dell probably figured out that the savings they made on sleazy behavior are profitable in spite of the fines.
IMHO, the fines levied should be something like 3x profits from bad behavior so that we get around this "fines as a cost of doing business" mentality.
... I paid a fair chunk of change to get next-day on site support. When I needed it, what it really meant was "they'll schedule with their subcontractor by the next day". Which in turn became, "The subcontractor schedules with their own subcontractor". Which added up to 7 days.
A major one.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I've been in the computer industry for over 15 years and involved wkstn and server purchasing and have most always recommended Dell. Sure I've had my moments where I was pissed as hell at them but have you ever tried dealing with some of the other big boys?? HP/Compaq ..LOL ... IBM pcs were the last big lot of computers that I purchased other than Dell and that was 13 years ago. That was a fairly good deal but imho, Dell has always had the best support out of the lot. Now don't get me wrong, that's not saying much. On a scale of 1 to 10 they're about 6.5 with the next closest at 5 or lower.
I stopped expecting good service from companies a long time ago. The consumers have spoken and we seem to want it cheap and who cares about anything else. The sad thing is that it is getting increasingly difficult to find places where I can pay more for better service. These days I just consider it a bonus if I get good support or a good buying/owning experience in general.
For a more specific answer, I actually had a very good experience returning my Xbox 360 to Microsoft (twice). Almost no time on hold, no hassle on the phone, quick turnaround on the repair/replacement. It sucks that the hardware is flaky, but I'm not really pissed about it since it wasn't a big headache. Just goes to show that a good support experience can actually help make up for a bad product.
Oh, and no. I've never had a good support experience with Dell or HP (I've owned laptops from both). If something goes wrong I just try and fix it myself. You can get replacement parts if you spend a little time calling suppliers into one of them caves and sells you the part even though you are not an "authorized reseller." This approach is annoying and time consuming, but it's way better than sitting through the standard help desk script several times before finally being elevated to someone who may be able to help you.
What it doesn't support is multiple processors, which is a non-issue for the market XP Home is intended for.
Both of the articles mentioned (and some of the comments here) have folks defending Dell. "That's not been my experience!" Why are these folks only popping up now?
:)
I wonder how many people Dell has employed just to post comments in their favor when they get bad press.
Not one person I know has said anything good about Dell support. I've been a sys admin and "computer guy" since '92.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes. See one of my other responses in this thread about dealing with HP. Brief recap... If you actually PAY for a support contract, you will get good support.
Well, and I had hopes that since Alienware was bought by DELL, things would improve.
Guess not.
Alienware's hardware and support is REALLY bad.
So I suspect DELL has some of its own house to clean first before it makes any improvement on Alienwares.
Meanwhile people's new Alienware 4K laptops are burning up and the cases are cracking from the thermal expansion of the case.
Tons of overheating and quality control issues for a 4 THOUSAND dollar laptop.
Yikes!!
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I have had Dell support go either way on the spectrum. When I first purchased a Dell Inspiron 5150 in college it was missing rubber feet. I sent an email and their automated system identified my request, requested a confirmation, and mailed me replacements at no charge.
About 2 years into the 3 year warranty the laptop died and after 5 repair attempts they replaced what was a $1600 laptop at new with a new E1505 which I priced at $2000 online when I received it.
The screen of that E1505 replacement however died after only about a year. However the original 3 year warranty on the original laptop was expired. The state of Maine however has a 5 year expressed warranty that can not be disclaimed.
I attempted to contact Dell based on that state law and was stonewalled by both tech support and customer service. The only information I could be given was the snail mail address and long distance fax number for their legal department.
I ended up fixing the laptop myself with the aid of the service manual and a $25 part bought off Ebay.
Also another sticking point is the battery. I understand under normal use they only usually hold up for about a year. However mine was primarily plugged in. I speculate that with companies advertising duty cycles that even while plugged in the startup of the machine counts against that the chip shuts off the battery after the expected number of duty cycles is met. Searching around on the internet has found other people who have noted this behavior with their batteries. This in combination with the outrageous prices for the battery replacements I bet will lead to more legal trouble with Dell.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
A Systemax rep told me FreeBSD ruined my motherboard. That comment really got my goat, and I gave that representative an earful about what I thought about that kind of FUD. This was on a new server, never worked correctly from sysinstall on. After they had rpl'd the motherboard and RAM, the server has been running asterisk on BSD for over a year now handling 12,000+ calls a month with nary a hiccup. I don't know of any that good service at the consumer level, but I do think most usually give *decent* service at corporate support level.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
I agree with the concept, but let's face it, no man, beast, nor corporation has ever been given a death sentence for fraud, an nor should they be.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
There's only 1 word for this: Finally. Big companies like these ought to learn to treat their customers properly. Hopefully the other big names will learn and hopefully respect us. But as I said. Hopefully.
Fortran is for pimps.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
That's not a discussion, it's a contradiction.
That is all.
Did they also get slapped for sending people junk-mail wth signature-required? Oh please, oh please, oh please! :P
My company laptop is a Dell and is supported by our IT department so I have no experience in their customer support.
But what do people exactly think about the quality of Dell laptops? I have a Latitude D640 and I do not like the keyboard, trackpad or trackpoint. The LCD screen has a very low brightness. The only good thing I can say about the whole product is that it has a low weight for its size.
I just went through there tech support circus a couple weeks ago.
I bought a new XPS system and opted for the extra RAM upgrade (4gb instead of 3) not even thinking that they would ship it with the 32bit version of Vista.
So as soon as I checked and noticed sure enough it was the 32bit install and only 3.3GB was being detected I called up to ask about why they are selling systems with upgrades they know cannot be used, as is (and yes I know you can run the PAE and access the additional RAM). I ended up talking to 5 people on the phone, each giving me a completely different 1-800/866 number for "support" and sending me along, and 1 online tech. I was 'disconnected' at least 3 times.
The online tech openly admitted they knew the OS could not handle the RAM but were more than willing to sell it and if I wanted to use the installed RAM I should just buy the 64-bit Vista (which DELL does not support). He in no uncertain terms said there was no way that he would refund even a portion of the cost of the upgrade since the hardware worked, it was simply a software issue that prevented the RAM from being used (though it was their software choice). After I compared that argument to a dealership blaming GM because their cars can't use the sonar kit they sell their customers, the conversations kind of ended.
I finally decided to give it one last try and lucked out. The sales service rep I talked to agreed that it seemed pretty odd to sell a system and push an upgrade when they know it is unusable and would cause the service agreement to become useless if the customer actually fixed themselves (installed the 64bit). So after a short conversation she simply refunded me the upgrade cost.
The whole process took about 2 hours and reminded me of the horror stories you hear of people dealing with insurance companies.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
I wish I had mod points because this is funny. Whoever modded this troll obviously doesn't keep track of all the problems with the Windows OS that shows up on the stories here.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
I'm not a fan of Dell, but it's for practical observations, not stuff I've read. Sure, things happen to people, and I accept that. A million bad (or good) reviews doesn't mean that I'll have a bad (or good) experience.
I do lots of IT work. If it's not for an employer, it's because someone asked me to give a friend a hand with something. When I talk to someone and they ask "have you worked on X platform", sure, and I can tell them the generalities of when, why, to what extent, etc, etc.
My initial contact with Dell was with some "high end" servers. They may as well have been gold plated for the cost. They were delivered in crates because of their size. That was probably the first thing to annoy me, trying to lift the damned things into the rack. A 6u machine is heavy, and Dell always manages to weight them down quite a bit extra. Not really for practical reasons though, unless dropped machines are a good thing.
It wasn't for a few more months that I got my hands on a severely damaged one. I was very pleased, now I could gut it, and see what all the parts were. The owners of the machines were always glowing about how great Dell is, and they're the only platform to use, and how Mike Dell personally puts his seal of approval on every design, and their test environment to ensure any platform is absolutely stable in any conditions. It was enough to make my puke, or at least be skeptical.
The first Dell I gutted turned out to be all Intel. Not just processors, but almost every piece in it. Dell uses a lot of Intel motherboards, CPU's, and network cards. Fine, I find Intel parts to be stable. Intel motherboards usually are not blazing fast high performance, but they'll usually (usually) keep working. I prefer AMD processors, but when it comes down to it, as long as it works, it's just a preference.
When I looked at more Dell machines, one fact became apparent. They're using the cheapest drives that they can get in bulk. Sometimes they're absolutely crap. I can't say that I've seen too many high quality drives. Sure, good interfaces, but not great drives.
When building good servers, I've always been able to build more machine for half the price (or better) than a Dell. That in itself has helped me win people away from the Dell beastie. Sure, their specials are priced well, because they're clearing out the warehouse of older equipment. When the customer sees the performance, they usually wet themselves.
I switched a customer from a 6u quad processor Dell, to a 1u dual processor SuperMicro. They were having problems on the Dell, where it wouldn't boot with their upgraded memory under Solaris (it was a Solaris problem). They needed to be moved while we switched the box to Linux. This customer was hell bent on Dell from day 1, but after being on the SuperMicro, I couldn't convince them to move back. We were shy on drive redundancy, so we built out two beefier SuperMicro 1u's (RAID5 across 4 SATA drives) for less than the current balance on the Dell lease was. Sorry, you still have $20k in payments to make on the machine you don't want. In time, it ended up sitting in someone's office as a table because no one wanted to carry it anywhere.
So, we've covered the price and technology. How about the support.
I've managed to stay off of most of the support calls. I don't have to call for technical support, if it's broken, I can identify it. With no less than 3 customers, they've been screwed by what they thought was 4 hour response time. What they were later advised, it was "4 hour response between 6am and 4pm, Monday through Friday". Anything outside of those hours were deferred to the next working day. It's hard to tell the customer sitting there with the $40,000 server with a dead hard drive and a 4 hour response contract that he'll just have to live with it.
The
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It's still better than the bullshit you get from CompUSA.
I remember cussing out the manager of the Concord, CA, store, Kathy Chambers, for beign a complete retard when she tried to charge me $169 for installing a Mass Storage Device, instead of the $69 for a Hard Drive, despite the fact the hard drive I was trying to get installed was sold by them as a HARD DRIVE, and even had HARD DRIVE printed on the box. Two different prices for the same thing, just different terminology.
I could tell CompUSA horror stories *AD NAUSEUM*, but that would be somewhat offtopic.
Anyways, its good that New York is finally holding companies responsible for the hell they put customers through. EA Arts is another example of a company that flagrantly goes out of its way to avoid fixing problems caused by them (selling games where the online software is our of date, and then forcing you to call bakc and download numerous patches that don't work, making their customer service number hard to find, etc.). However, New York sould be taking care of it's own people before suing anybody for bad service. Seeing as how taxpayers pay for city services, getting service from New York, or any city/state/county, *HAS* to be harder than getting service from Dell.
This is why I build my own computers, and avoid cheaper, pre-build boxes:
Pros:
1) You get everything you want: No preloaded or promotional crap, unnecessary drivers, installation discs (My mother's HP has 8 'recovery' discs. Funny, Windows fits on 1).
2) Higher-quality parts: If I get a cheap part, it's because I decided to buy it in favor of another component, instead of making everything cheap for lower manufacturing costs.
3) Better performing parts: More efficient heatsinks, more durable power supplies, etc.
4) Somewhat better service: If you are a system builder, chances are you know alot more that Mrs. Smith the soccer mom, and aren't calling because you can't plug in the mouse. If I'm calling AMD about an OEM processor, chances are I know enough of what I'm doing to not waste time over something mundane.
5) Each component is chosen individually: I can get the video card/CPU/RAM/OS/HDD/audio card, video cars, mouse, case, keyboard, motherboard, warranty plan, and monitor that I WANT, and not letting some bluetooth sporting, ankle-biting, minimum-wage Support Tech tell me what *he* thinks is best for my needs ('needs' = 'wants' diguised as 'needs').
6) Upgradable parts: Was told by HP I needed to buy *their* HDD if I wanted it to work in their box. Said "screw you", went to Fry's and bought a new drive with 3 times the capacity. Works fine. Any non-tech minded person would have believed them and gotten swindled. HDDs may be replaceable with any other brand, but other parts, such as CPU/RAM/audio/video cards probably won't work correctly if you upgrade them yourself.
7) Your choice of OS: Any of the Linux daughters or Windows.
8) Can be fixed yourself without voiding the warranty.
9) No ads, product tie-ins, 'lock-ins', or integrated promotional software.
Cons:
1) Usually *much* more expensive: Either cheaper for a small fileserver or more expensive for a high-end gaming rig.
2) Usually more driver discs to keep track of: Can be remedied by making 1 CD/DVD with all your drivers on it.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
The company I work for has had one bad sales rep after another. For example I wanted a quote for a server that came in at $5000 as i costed it on the site (The second such server inside 2 weeks) and I emailed the rep to ask for our price. Not only did I have to chase them for almost a week, with nag phone calls to voice mail, and email but put up with the we really couldn't give a t@ss about your $150,000 a year account. Ok small by some standards, but the indies and VARs would snap your hand off for that.
So we are slowly going HP, ok more expensive but at least the sales people actually want to sell us kit.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
Oh snap...
Yeah, I've returned monitors in the past by just giving them any old tag, but last time they had to be really specific and asked for a desktop's tag if I didn't know the original system it should have gone with.
Also, just once I had a new tablet from them that they had no record of the tag for. I basically had to find a copy of the invoice from our purchaser and give them the Dell order number that contained it. This was after the poor phone tech had looked up our company record and scrolled back through it ("It says you guys ordered $40k worth of stuff last month. We should just be able to take your word for it!" of course I know what it's like working a helpdesk and not having clearance to do a quick easy fix for someone...) That took two 1.5 hour calls to run through!
But still, from the 90s on, they are still my favorite premade system company since they're (historically) of good build quality and always very easy to disassemble. Also two things that sold me my laptop several years ago was that they were the only game in town for a laptop with an (upgradeable-ish) nVidia 3D card and a hot swappable secondary battery. Build quality and support quality are getting shaky lately; still, before this at work we were using HP-Compaqs! God, I replaced 1-3 worn out power supplies a week for about a year there... now the DVD-ROM/CDRWs are wearing out and gluing discs inside them, leaving gum on the disc hub! Now THOSE are bad PCs!
Quite a few people do not seem to get the difference between corporate accounts (thousands, if not millions of dollars in revenue) and end users, the ones who are getting a shaft.
The rule and this whole deal is only about the end users who watched an ad and decided to apply for a loan or purchased some sort of a deal promised by Dell. These are the guys who got the short end of the stick.
We have had nothing but good things to say about Dell. Replacement parts always arrived ahead of schedule. Calls were prompt and right on target. Dell service was superb. That is because we are corporate customer that spends tons of money on their hardware and service. The cheapest servers that we buy cost several laptops. The performance machines that we get cost just as much as cars.
The problem described in the article is related to end users who expect XYZ and end up getting something different. This is a no brainer. If you get a computer for $700, then do you really expect a qualified person to talk to you for hours about a problem? Anybody who is remotely qualified to do such support will probably ask for $15-20 per hour. This means that several long phone calls from the same customer will wipe out the profit that you made on sale. I am sorry to break this to everybody, but hardware is becoming a commodity , much like Windows, and you are expected to know and act in a certain manner if you buy a laptop and get into a problem. No company in the right mind will hire qualified engineers, let's say the ones that can do Tier II and Tier III support, to answer phones. You do that and your business will die because you WILL NOT make any profit.
Dell is much like any other large business. They have plenty of customers and they generate plenty of revenue. If you don't like it, go get an Apple because Dell has another customer lined up already. They will make tons of money by dealing with large businesses and universities and people who are simply stuck with Dell because they don't want any other alternatives. Telling Dell or Microsoft that their end-user support sucks is like telling Bank of America that you're closing an account due to whatever reason.
I am living in Malaysia. The Dell support here is great. I have called 5 times for supports. My calls are answers in less than a minute. The tech support was patient. Guided me through the entire process of troubleshooting. I wonder, how's other countries' Dell doing?
Wow-- they could get Verizon for the same thing. Have you ever tried to get one of those folks on the phone? I called them to ADD services and I was on hold from 10:30am till 3:30pm (when my phone battery died). I have tried many other occasions with similar results. When my FIOS Internet went o the blitz, I called to get it fixed. They kept telling me that someone would get back to me within 24 hours. And then backed it up with their computer phone tree... I loved their computerized responses: "We are committed to fixing your problem by Monday (today's date)"
When Verizon works, their service is fine. But as a company, THEY SUCK ASS.
this is why I left the company. i was in DELL tech support SEVERAL years ago and this was an on going problem. DELL is a HUGE outsourcing company. they only have one call center that are actual employees hired by DELL and the rest are out sourcing and we all know that out sourced call centers hire warm bodies and the occasional tech that moves up the ranks to supervisor rather fast which decreases the quality of the rest because that tech is no longer taking calls, only escalations. I had a feeling this was going to happen to DELL. I am suprised it took this long, but not suprised that it happened.
"That's right...I said it."
I deal with Dell in Australia - in fact I'm typing this on an XPS M1330. While they have their issues, I've been MUCH happier with them than many other vendors I've dealt with and certainly never experienced anything like the issues described here.
.... sure, Dell have their issues, but I've not found another vendor that doesn't rate worse on the suck scale.
I've dealt with Dell for employees buying ultra-cheap laptops, too, so I know it's not some "XPS" thing.
Dell Australia must be a very different organisation. Certainly they bundle basically no crapware with their machines, while I hear horror stories about the standard configuration in the US.
Their hold times aren't great. Their staff could use some product knowledge and better language skills. However, they all want to help, and that's a big improvement over many OEMs.
Additionally, Dell's online support offerings are pretty good. You can actually get complete sets of drivers reliably. They issue driver updates and BIOS fixes. Occasionally their KB is even useful.
When I was having issues that I could demonstrate were an ATi driver bug (by pointing them to the changelog that showed that ATi had fixed it in the new version) Acer remained completely uninterested in providing a driver update for their hardware. "This is the driver that was qualified for the machine" gets tiresome when it's BUGGY and the upstream vendor has released a fix you can't use without your OEM's cooperation. They just could not comprehend why a driver update would be desirable and did not understand why ATi released driver updates. They were also very rude and had a strong "we have your money so why should we care?" attitude.
Dell, on the other hand, just get on with it and release updates for drivers they have to customise for particular hardware like low/mid range video chipsets. They don't even have to be prompted.
They also come out on site and fix things with absolutely no fuss. Got a hardware issue? A tech will be here tomorrow (on time), will know what he's doing, and will have bought the right parts along. This is unique in my experience with OEMs.
Their machines are well enough built that you rarely need the tech, and more importantly seem to generally avoid systemic design faults like inadequate cooling systems. It's nice to know that the laptop you buy will work properly, something I know from personal experience isn't true of everybody.
I do wish they'd improve their phone staff training and make it easier to reach the person you need to talk to, because there is quite a bit of call forwarding before you get anywhere. I'll put up with it in exchange for the rest though.
So
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_manslaughter
http://www.hse.gov.uk/corpmanslaughter/faqs.htm
http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/03/15/41798/corporate-manslaughter-legal-q.html
i am pretty sure this law was brought in due to a few things where the coprorate body was deemed to be liable for deaths caused but there seemed to be inadequate laws to punish the heads of the coprorate bodies
it's not just businesses but also the national health bodies here in the UK and also local/regional councils too.
from what i gather the charges being brought are rare and even rarer is a successful charge.
tell them that they will be getting a letter from Christopher M. Forrester if they do not process your cancellation NOW. (couldn't find a Morrison listed but they should recognize the name)
(bonus points if you actually could get him to write that letter)
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Who's standards should be used to define what is "needed or deserved"?
It's the damn definition, if you don't like it, use another word. It's meant to be negative, and I'm sick of selfish fucks trying to "reclaim" it as a positive thing. It isn't.
Who's standards? Normal, cooperative, non-selfish people's standards. The standards 90% of people in the world use. The standard standards.
Here's an idea: rather than try to make people think greed is good, how about not being greedy?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Who's standards? Normal, cooperative, non-selfish people's standards. The standards 90% of people in the world use. The standard standards.
Here's an idea: rather than try to make people think greed is good, how about not being greedy? I am not making it good or bad. I am simply asking where the line is.
If you think there is a standard, then when exactly does desire become excessive?
What item or items are needed or deserved?
What item or items are neither needed nor deserved?
IF you really look at it, everyone has a different look as to what people need or deserve and when it becomes excessive.
As a result, if one were to truly go by the 90% of the world, then there would be two outcomes.
1. People neither need or deserve anything
2. People either need or deserve everything
So again,
Who's standards should be used to define where "excessive desire" is as opposed to "normal desire"?
Who's standards should be used to define what is "needed or deserved"?
I would appreciate a rational response rather than an irrational, knee-jerk response.
Let me ask you a question before we get into this, so I know if I'm wasting my time or not: in your world view, is there such a thing as excessive desire? Is there such a thing as undeserved reward? If you don't think desires can be excessive, or you think all rewards are deserved, then we can't have a conversation. If you think desires can be excessive, or rewards undeserved, then we are in agreement and we can stop this pedantry.
What it boils down to is this: when I use the word "greedy" I am saying, in my opinion, that someone's desires are excessive, or their sought after rewards undeserved. When you say it, it is your standard. That's how words like greed, or good, or love, or freedom work. There is a large element of personal interpretation to all such words.
There does not need to be a standard. The whole idea that there is some invisible line, this side of which is greedy, and the other side selfless, is ludicrous. Words like greed don't work that way.
Face it: greed is bad. Its in the definition of the word. There is no standard, nor does there need to be. When someone uses the word greed, it is understood by most people to be a personal opinion, not some absolute.
And it is understood to be a bad thing by most people. Most people do not like greed. Most people would rather punish the greedy, and would not like to be seen as greedy themselves. Only a few nut cases revel in their greed and celebrate it as a virtue.
That is just the way people are, they don't like greed and selfishness. People are natural cooperators, and part of being a natural cooperator is the desire to punish free riders.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Funny enough while working for a fairly major tech company, I ordered a large amount of HP laptops, no special contracts or anything, but extended warranties on all. Over a 3 year period where we had the engineers previous laptops dying at the rate of around 4 or so with major failures, and a further few with more minor keyboard/screen/power supply issues every year, the HP's travelled the world and performed flawlessly, with only two service calls needed for approx 15 laptops, each had the spare part waiting within around 12 hours max.
With tape units the support is just perfect, a month ago we had a tape unit eject mechanism stuff up, with 1 month of a 3 year warranty to go, HP had a replacement (refurbished unit) there the following morning, unfortunately, it was DOA, (faulty power connection to the switch) so I rung HP and they had a brand new unit the following morning. Every corporate dealing I have had with HP over the last 10 years has been unbelievably good. I could reel other things like laptops people had password protected the BIOS that were'nt under warranty but HP spent 45mins on the phone helping me to remove it.
As a consumer though I must admit HP support left a lot to be desired, I recently had to go in to bat for my nephew who bought a laptop from Harvey Norman (who were the most useless and deceitful pricks possible to him and his mother). After 6 months it packed up with various faults, and then spent most of the following 6 months either in repairs, or sitting on the shelf at Harvey Norman who were lying and saying it was with the HP authorised repairer in Clayton. The repairer sent it back one last time but it packed up again with the same faults that day. I got involved as it had taken 6 weeks for the last repair and was now out of warranty, so the repairer who was supposed to have fixed it, stated it would cost around $1000 for repairs.
To HP's credit, when I initially rung them they correctly stated it was out warranty, but luckily I had collected all the paperwork, and hassled Harvey Norman for the previous repair details, as well as looking up HP's own part and maintenance manuals, and proved it was a recurring fault that had never been fixed despite being in for repairs 6 times! When I provided them the details of the shoddy repairs, along with their own recommended repair procedure for the faults, they immediately agreed to send it to the repairer, and the motherboard as well as the screen driver would be replaced regardless of any testing. Upon pickup (3 weeks later!) I made sure I obtained copies of all the repair paperwork, and got the staff to write down exactly what work was done. I immediately opened the unit up, and what dd I find, they hadn't replaced a single part, and the unit still had the same fault!
This then started a 2 month merry go round with HP, as I now had photo graphic proof of consumer fraud, as well as an authorised HP repairer deliberately forging repair docs, and charging HP for parts that were never fitted! In the end I had to send a fairly terse letter that if I didn't have a resolution by COB that day, I will be forwarding copies of all the photos I had taken of the parts before and after the "replacement", along with copies of the docs and parts serial numbers signed by the repairer that new parts had been fitted, to the entire Board of Directors of HP USA, as well as the local media, and a report to consumer affairs.
Within an hour HP had gotten back to me and offered a couple of very much higher specced models to choose from, along with an extended warranty in exchange for the dead laptop!
All in all, an absolutely horrible experience for my nephew and his mum, who saw his first laptop wasted, and then treated like crap by Harvey Norman at Southland, and then a HP repairer lying repeatedly and forging documents. Luckily the fact I work for a large corporation, and that I have enough knowledge and push allowed me to finally get satisfaction, but you just wouldn't believe how hard I had to work for it!
Actually, greed isn't the problem; it is the action stemming from the greed that is the problem. Sometimes greed can lead to a business changing their policies when their customers are flocking over to the competition when there is a problem. One such example is Jack in the Box. When several of Jack-in-the-Box's customers had food poisoning from their products, the biggest punishment they received was from their customers. They had to struggle to win the trust of their customers back. Ford is another example. Ford has made many products that lacked in features and reliability. They even have gone so low with the whole Ford/Firestone ordeal. As a result, they are no longer a viable option to many people. They still are not seeing the whole picture. Why do you think they are losing ground to Toyota, Kia, Nissan, and Volkswagen?
As for Dell, it isn't the government they need to worry about, it is their customers. The customer service and product quality has been an issue for quite some time now. I even call them "Packard Dell" as they are no better than Packard Bell was in the 1990s.
My point was there really is no line to say what item or items are needed or deserved, so the government simply punishing someone for simply being greedy could very well introduce more problems. As for the Union Carbide incident, I agree the individuals involved should have been punished with the laws already on the books, not for being greedy but for what they did to save money. Another question is what can be done when a government does the same thing? A similar incident of eliminating the safety protocols led to the Chernobyl disaster.
BTW, just because I am stating greed is not a vice doesn't mean it is a virtue. IMO, greed is closer to being neutral as I have pointed out; both good and bad can come from greed.
Why change policies when you can hire a PR firm and change perceptions? That is what corporations do, and it is because of greed.
When a corporation attempts to do the right thing, as (possibly, who knows what these corporations actually did as opposed to what they said) illustrated in your examples, that isn't greed, just like it isn't rape when you fuck someone who wants it, and it isn't stealing when you buy something.
Enlightened self interest is good. Self interest is neutral. Greed is bad. You can redefine red to mean blue, but then everyone will think you're crazy.
In my experience, people who defend greed are not defending enlightened self interest. Enlightened self interest leads to cooperative, fair, and reciprocal behavior. The defenders of greed are usually trying to conflate their own short sighted, selfish, manipulative and dishonest behavior with the kind of behavior that stems from real enlightened self interest.
So, are you just trying to muddy the waters here, conflating greed with cooperative, reciprocal, and fair self interest? If not, why do you insist on using the word greed in ways that most other people do not? The only reason I can come up with is that you are trying to make the definition of "greed" less clear so that you can justify certain behaviors.
But maybe I'm wrong. If so, what is your motivation here?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Being a prick has nothing to do with religion.
Actually as has been stated before - dell business provides exceptionally good support.
Cisco also offers good support but they're pretty blatant with the 'you get what you pay for' routine. On the high-side, I had a router that wasn't even listed on our contract at the time replaced in ~3 hours on a holiday friday night.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
here's the deal. i cannot claim that there was any intention or malcontent involved, more likely incompetence or most likely, apathy. the truth is: dell puts way more emphasis on it's "business" customer support than it's "consumer". if you purchased a "consumer" grade product, but were registered as a business user, guess what? you're going to get better support. this is why you'll hear (mostly) accolades about dell support from business/enterprise customers. The lawsuit was started because of lack of "consumer" support, and rightfully so. granted, the enterprise support was good, but it was a headache even to get that support sometimes. the consumer support was not nearly as importatant to dell as it's enterprise support, and rightfully so. the consumer division has little room for extra revenues (service contracts, etc.) and even lower profit margins. the lawsuit brought by the state of new york was regarding deceptive business practices regarding consumers. *(if)* i worked for dell for about 7 months, and knowing what i know, i would definitely say that they have a case. i'm not going to cite any specific examples, but i'm sure they'll win their case.
I bought an XPS m1330 (slightly cheaper than a macbook and lighter) as a "consumer" in Spain. My experience with Dell's support has been great so far...
:P). However it is quite inexpensive, and if support is good I'm more than willing to deal with the problems it develops (which, by the way, any other hardware will develop as well, as nowadays everything seems to be produced in the same slave-powered factory from China).
Although the people attending the phone were clearly non-native speakers (which makes me wonder where could they outsource it cheaper than a spanish-speaking country!), and the commercial who attended me was a such utterly incompetent guy, so far the technical support has been excellent.
I got the "bad apple" from the batch (as there are a lot of XPS in my uni and mine seems to be the only one which has developed problems so far); my LED display had a dead "lamp" (like a huge dot too bright, bigger than a pixel), and last week I lost a hard drive which I managed to savage so-so (didn't lose too much data).
In both cases, after calling support and explaining the problem to a perplexed tier-1 guy... (I guess "while updating, kernel started to log problems in the sata device, which I confirmed with smartmontools, so I have dumped with dd the drive and confirmed the problems on several sectors of the drive by plugging it to a different machine" has to sound hardcore to a tier-1 guy expecting an old lady which believed "wireless" meant that it didn't have to be plugged on, otherwise logical - veridic case). They sent a a hard drive / a technician on the next morning (next monday on the drive), who repaired it (swapped the display) on the spot. No sending the laptop and waiting 15 days for it without any assurance of the hard drive contents (ahem Acer), no 300++euro for a keyboard swap I did for outrageous 70euro (ahem HP compaq), no arguing with the store if the damage was my fault or theirs (AHEM Apple Spain!!!! in particular K-tuin store in Madrid! - just troubling with laptops, as my 3G ipod got A+ support dealing directly with Apple)...
So far, I am so satisfied with their support that I'm considering extending the warranty; I've also bought a cheap-ass server from them and I'll possibly suggest replacing our cheaper sun's x2200 with even-cheaper 1U Dells in my workplace.
Not astroturfing though; hardware seems to be on the cheap side (just 2 drive slots on the T105 server seems to be milking the price differences too much, and XPS keyboard is garbage compared to others - but hey, at least I got hardware keys for right button, del, pgdown and pgup